


14: “Hey, I’m with you, okay? Always.”

by SpecialTrampAgentOtters (Elsie1285)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Drabble, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 02:17:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6311185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsie1285/pseuds/SpecialTrampAgentOtters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This drabble was written for the X-Files Number Fan Fic Meme over on Tumblr.</p><p>The story of an Apollo 11 Keychain, as told by Dana Scully.</p>
            </blockquote>





	14: “Hey, I’m with you, okay? Always.”

14: “Hey, I’m with you, okay? Always.”

 

As she bundled him into his carrier in the back of her silver sedan, he protested wildly, arms ramrod straight and legs at impossible angles. She coaxed him, wordless humming giving way to joyless singing when he steadfastly refused to co-operate. 

“William was a bullfrog…” The tune was wobbly through her silent tears but he settled, legs turning to jelly as they sunk into the carseat and palms reaching for the emblem glittering from her keys. Sinking into the edge of the seat, Scully pressed the keychain into William’s expectant hands.

“You like that, huh?” She remembered the same words, in a different car, four years previous: Emily’s chubby fingers playing with the crucifix which blazed around her neck. How many times can a woman lose a damn necklace, only to be reunited with it at a million improbable times? How about how a woman can lose both of her children and never be reunited with either?

“Your daddy gave me that. I was turning 33; probably wasn’t going to turn 34 either, and I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. Your grandma had offered to take me to dinner but I refused; told her I had a headache and I was just going to go to bed. I don’t know why we’d started to share lifts. It was way out of his way to pick me up in the mornings and detour to my apartment at night after work but after Allentown, it just started to be a thing. He’d show up at my door; sometimes a doughnut in hand, often times a croissant. But there was coffee, always coffee. Come to think of it, I don’t think he wanted me to drive without him, in case...well, you know…” 

Sometimes, even five years on, certain scents flung her back to the dark days of her stampeding mortality: the dizzying cocktail of dry-cleaning and cologne, air-freshener and anti-freeze, mingling with the French Roast percolating through the car. Sometimes, after a particularly aggressive bout of chemo, the assault on her nasal passages would be too much. She remembered motioning noiselessly from the passenger seat for him to pull over, hand to mouth, the acrid taste of molten bile erupting to flood the back of her mouth. When she re-entered the vehicle, furtively wiping her mouth, the coffee had been replaced by water and, as they sped away from Georgetown, she remembered spotting from her rear-view mirror the tiny lavender cardboard christmas tree freshener, lying forlorn at the side of the road, hurled away in disgust by her partner, raging at the world one tiny inconsequential act at a time.

Twitching her back into the present, William started to fuss, the keychain dropped carelessly under the fold a navy sweatshirt just out of reach. A ribbon of drool strained to meet the geometric pattern of the seat, leaving slug-tracks, and she fished the seal out for him to grasp in his sticky fingers.

“Anyway, this one night, the night of my birthday, your daddy insisted we went to dinner. He hadn’t mentioned my birthday all day. I think I remember being relieved that he’d seemed to forget. By 7pm, I’d finished a whole plate of ribs; it must have been one of my better days, appetite-wise.” 

She never used to order ribs around Mulder, after that one time in Delta Glen when he’d swept his digits across her cheek and she thought she was going to implode. But after Philadelphia and Ed Jerse, she’d noticed they’d migrated to unmitigated touching. She was in sensory overload, craving any and all intimate touches from him before the inevitable. She thought he probably wanted to just make sure she was still there.

“So we’d just finished eating, and I was concentrating on not looking at the time to work out just how many more hours until the wretched date was done with, and low and behold, the birthday barber shop started up, complete with pink ice-cream confection and a sparkler that may or may not have contravened Health and Safety standards with its ferocity”

William turned the chain of the keyring over and over in his pink balled fist, the weighty auric medallion slumped against a corduroy thigh.

“He had to the goofiest grin on his stupid face, clapping like a maniac, tune out of key. When the felicitation-crew retreated, he cracked some lame-ass joke about celebrating in dog-years or something. I don’t really remember.”

She did remember the maddeningly consistent lock of burnt umber that hung over a creased forehead showing more than a few signs of anxiety across the years. She remembered wishing she could replace the straw hanging from the side of his teeth with her tongue. She remembered blushing and hoping he’d put it down to her discomfort in his surprise. She remembered the brushed cotton of the white box wrapped in gilt ribbon. She remembered the jump of fear that coursed through her circulatory system, terrified that he’d chosen some ridiculous gesture this birthday, this the year of her impending doom.

“I remember being so very confused when I opened it. Look, William.” She turned the memento over in her hands. “This is earth; we live here. And this is the moon. You see him when we read ‘Goodnight Moon’.”

William poked an uncoordinated forefinger at the eagle, claws imbedded in the lunar-surface, gripping against the pull of anti-gravity. She bit back a bitter laugh; she was pretty sure she knew how that damn bird felt.

“Look here. On the back: ‘Commemorating Apollo Eleven and the mission to the moon, July 1969’. As if that’s the most normal thing to present to your partner on what might be her last birthday on earth. His grin was enormous and pride was radiating off him in waves." Her voice is wistful for a moment. “Anyway, I was about to brush it off; it was a bizarre choice of present; when we were interrupted. It wasn’t until after the case I’d realised what your daddy wanted me to know.”

She exhaled, back sore from bracing herself against the rear seat of the car, and tried to block out the pounding in her skull. The tears she’d banished when packing a miniscule bag for him, tucking in a blue receiving blanket; a felt star from the dreaded-mobile from above his cot; numerous sleepers and rompers and that damned-hat, threatened to spill over once more and she dug crescents into her palms as she rose from the seat, taking her keys with her.

An indignant squawk from the seat drew her back, her mind fuzzy with grief. She surveyed the tiny fist, grasping for the token she’d pulled away with her. His face screwed up with rage and she bent to him again. Unhooking the chain, she held it up in front of her son, tears coursing down both their flushed cheeks, unbidden now.

“Now listen, William. Your daddy wanted me to know that for every amazing advancement in our worlds, our lifetimes, there are a few exceptional individuals that, without whom, such miracles would not be possible. He was trying to tell me that what can be imagined can be achieved if we dream it, only with hard work. And teamwork. This chain was to commemorate those who gave everything to make anything possible. It was your daddy’s way of telling me…” She faltered; “...telling me that no-one gets there alone.” 

She slipped the chain into the side of the bag, tucked inside the blanket. 

“I’m putting this here for you. I’ll let Annie know it’s there for your new…” She couldn’t call them his parents. Nothing would ever take the title away from Mulder, from her. “...your new family. They’ll love you; my precious boy. But hey, I’m with you, too, okay? Always” 

She kissed his head, fancying the soft spot on the crown of his skull to be porous, absorbing her drabbling; that one day his memories would flicker back to this day. She took one more jerky sweep at her tears, before climbing into the driver’s seat and guiding the company vehicle out onto the road.

Towards the social worker's’ office.

***

“You should understand ... this was a life choice by a single mother and a terribly difficult decision for her. But I can say it was only for the good of the child." 

Mrs Van de Kamp nodded, satisfied. Her eyes drank in the bundle placed in her arms: moist little face, sticky with tears; spiralling chubby arms; jolting, kicking legs; and a ridiculous hat, perched on his head, the bunny ears protruding at ludicrous angles. He was perfect.

“I want you to meet William.”


End file.
